Our perception of the "teacher" is dead

I'm about to go off on a tangent right now so if you are easily offended please change the tab. For those of you who continue reading feel free to challenge me or add in your own opinions....

As we start another academic year, I have gone into it with the strong feeling that the role of the conventional teacher in today's society is dead!

Gone are the days when your teacher was the person or the source with the most subject knowledge. Gone are the days when your teacher or school could dictate what you were to learn.

R.I.P the teacher of 2015

What do we have instead? The Internet!!

The Internet is to us (both young and old) what the teacher was to the seven year old. The internet has all of the answers, from the meaning of all those weird emojis to how to build your own home using YouTube videos. The Internet is able to answer them all.

"So what about teachers", you ask.

Teachers are no longer with us, they are dead! (Weren't you listening?) What we're left with now in schools and colleges are facilitators.

Facilitators who do what it says on the tin, facilitate learning. They are given a curriculum and are expected forced to stick with it. Not taking into consideration the individual needs or desires of their students. Not taking into consideration that Sarah has a passion for coding her raspberry pi or that Matthew has a hunger to master the art of boxing and spends any spare moment studying his idols on YouTube. Instead they have to sit through mundane and outdated lessons set by a board who are clearly out of touch with the direction our new society is heading in.

Yes the Internet can "teach" us all these amazing things but it can't care, it can't show emotion or motivate. And this is where teachers can make a comeback!

It's common knowledge that the educational system is outdated but there is a pool of talented teachers people who genuinely care about the future and well-being of their students. If provided with a system where they can nurture and support their students, there is no reason for this not to succeed.

Until then they will continue to be nothing more than facilitators.....